7 ms·

Pine retail stores vs. community stores

81 points by rathboma 6y ago

flubert 6y ago
That link was 404 for me. Maybe this will work better? https://www.pine64.org/2020/12/02/pine-store-community-pricing-online-retail-stores/ https://www.pine64.org/2020/12/02/pine-store-community-prici...
jsperson 6y ago
OT - due to a desktop failure I recently handed my MacBook over to my wife and took my PBP off the shelf. The default OS is now Manjaro. And it’s great! The original default (Debian) was pretty janky. If you’re like me and relegated yours to occasional toy duties, spend an hour and get it upgraded. It’s a whole new experience. Edit: on topic - the community support is generally quite good. I got great forum and Twitter response. I do think that the retail option will provide some incentive to polish up the product a bit. Can’t imagine giving one of these to my mom yet.
- DenverCode 6y ago
  Interested in how you feel about all the issues at Manjaro - specifically related to all the drama concerning Phil and funds. It is something you view as a non-issue or is it just not enough to make you look elsewhere? I'm genuinely curious. Best.
  - jsperson 6y ago
    Honestly I hadn’t even heard of Manjaro until I saw that it was the new PBP default image. I’m not familiar with the drama. Sorry. It seems to be a smooth product so I do hope they work it out.
    - DenverCode 6y ago
      Phil Muller had been storing all funds in his personal bank account. The community desired more control over how the funds were used so OpenCollective and CommunityBridge were elected for fund collection - although Phil still holds more in his account then is stored in both CO and CB combined. Jonathon Fernyhough, a well known member of the Manjaro community, was placed in charge of managing the funds. Phil wanted to use $2k to purchase a laptop for one of the developers and wanted to bypass the process. This resulted in a debate between the two and ultimately Phil fired him and made himself treasurer. The community took to the forums to inquire into what Phil was doing, and he began locking/deleting threads and banning moderators. https://www.reddit.com/r/ManjaroLinux/comments/hwo33h/change_of_treasurer_for_manjaro_community_funds/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ManjaroLinux/comments/hwo33h/change... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23940824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23940824 https://linuxreviews.org/Manjaro_Linux_Lead_Developer_In_Hot_Waters_Over_Donation_Slush_Fund_For_Laptop_And_Personal_Items https://linuxreviews.org/Manjaro_Linux_Lead_Developer_In_Hot... That mixed with the deals he was cutting, proprietary software, as well as the SSL craziness (twice), really turned me off to them and I lost faith in the distro. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/31yayt/manjaro_forgot_to_upgrade_their_ssl_certificate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/31yayt/manjaro_forgo...
      - freedomben 6y ago
        Thanks for this. I had heard there was drama but didn't know much about it. Anyone able to represent the Phil side?
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        DenverCode 6y ago
        While I can't find the press release he put out, here is the original discussion with Phil (@PhilM). He responds to a lot of the questions and makes statements regarding his actions in it. Hopefully this will help you see his side a little better. https://archived.forum.manjaro.org/t/change-of-treasurer-for-manjaro-community-funds/154888 https://archived.forum.manjaro.org/t/change-of-treasurer-for...
- geokon 6y ago
  There is also an Armbian beta (which supposedly is pretty good) and a stable release should be soon..ish.. maybe https://www.armbian.com/pinebook-pro/ https://www.armbian.com/pinebook-pro/ https://forum.armbian.com/topic/12332-pinebook-pro/page/3/ https://forum.armbian.com/topic/12332-pinebook-pro/page/3/
sneak 6y ago
I think this is probably a mistake, as I doubt people who don't know they're purchasing a hobbyist/selfsupported device will know or care about the difference between "community pricing" and "retail pricing". Hopefully it works out for them.
- belval 6y ago
  Yeah I get the same vibe from the whole thing. If someone can't read the obvious disclaimers on the store that the device is community driven and to expect some work to make it run, what hope is there that they will understand they HAVE to pay that 10$ increase?
  - wmf 6y ago
    They need to hide the community store and do SEO on the consumer store so noobs won't even be able to find the wrong store.
  - Nullabillity 6y ago
    Offer a $100 "retail edition upgrade" when they ask for support, pointing back to the disclaimer?
    - acomjean 6y ago
      Or bump the default price $100 dollars and offer a “unsupported developer edition” for 100 less.
    - belval 6y ago
      Sure, but do you remember the story ~3 years ago of the girl who didn't know what Ubuntu was but saw that it dropped the price of her Dell PC so she picked it? She then proceeded to raise a fuss and create a lot of negative press even though she was irrevocably the person to blame. TLDR: Try to design systems that are full proof, in this day and age people don't read and the truth doesn't mean anything. EDIT: That was 11 years ago what the hell happened to those years ?!
- dghlsakjg 6y ago
ssivark 6y ago
I appreciate the challenge they face, and this attempt at a solution. If their retail arm does succeed better than anticipated, that would be a welcome bonus and richly deserved success that could augment the FOSS investment. In a sense this is a messaging problem leading to mismatched expectations, even when they have clear disclaimers on their product page. I wonder what alternative solutions might look like. Maybe advertise “community discount codes” prominently among Linux community forums and websites, so that only those who’re familiar with the online support community and asking for help will be likely to use those codes (rather than some naive consumer seeking to score a bargain). They could even mention on the product page that prominent Linux community forums should be a source for the relevant discount code (which might help introduce and “on board” newbies to Linux/FOSS communities).
0_gravitas 6y ago
Has anyone been able to get Arch to work on a PB? I know they have a version of Manjaro, so I'm curious about what the install/life is like for a typical Arch setup.
- bArray 6y ago
  Working with a similar device (PineTab) the experience is awesome. Once you get it installed you can just install any setup you like.
  - 0_gravitas 6y ago
    Interesting! How much are you able to stick with the wiki for an install, are there any parts that require more specific, possibly a bit non-trivial to acquire, knowledge (as in, not available on the wiki)?
    - bArray 6y ago
      I literally just downloaded the SD card image, flashed it, then put it into the device and it booted. After that I knew where I was at after grabbing the default login details. Currently running a custom version of wm2 which built more for touch devices: https://github.com/danielbarry/oakwm/ https://github.com/danielbarry/oakwm/
- avery42 6y ago
  It's been a while, but a few months ago I used this image [0] and it worked great. [0]: https://github.com/nadiaholmquist/archiso-pbp/releases https://github.com/nadiaholmquist/archiso-pbp/releases
squarefoot 6y ago
From early in the article: "Let me start by making one thing clear – the current Pine Store isn’t going away and the pricing in the Pine Store will remain unchanged." Then near the end: "The Pine Store, in its current form, isn’t going anytime soon and the current community-oriented price point will not change." I don't want to nitpick, but I believe some further clarification would be needed; those "in its current form" and "anytime soon" can make a world of difference. Don't get me wrong, I totally support the move, although I'm not sure bumping the price to $299 for a device that isn't 100% ready yet would be a good move, especially considering that most customers in retail shops wouldn't be so sensitive about privacy, openness, etc. compared to online purchasers. If I may offer an idea to recover some costs, why not making a backplane board for the PinePhone mainboard, with screws, flat cables to the mainboard and connectors to the external world? It could become both a development platform for the phone, and be used as a SBC for tinkering. Also all people who upgraded their phone to the 3GB/32GB version could make some use of their old mainboard. It could become a normal procedure: phone is upgraded, old mainboard becomes useable again, everything is reused and nothing is thrown away. The message sent would be so different from other phone manufacturers and their planned obsolescence.
- blihp 6y ago
  My take was that they were primarily referring more to the costs associated with handling the overwhelming tech support requests from less/non-technical users rather than what sounds like occasionally selling specific items at a loss. It's the difference between user 'A' getting their device, having a problem and realizing that they need to do some searches/ask in the forums/get in a chat room to resolve it (i.e. self-support by the user... what many Linux users have been used to forever on the desktop/server side) and user 'B' having the same problem but deciding to contact Pine64 saying 'make this work!' (i.e. full support from the seller) It's one thing to contact Pine64 if you've done your due diligence and determined you have a faulty device (or worse: found a design flaw.) It's something else entirely, and the thing they aren't set up to handle, to expect it to be a consumer ready/friendly solution.
ogre_codes 6y ago
It's funny, there was a goofy toy computer called the "DevTerm" that popped up on the top of HN a couple times recently. It was more expensive than this, had a terrible non-hinged design, and was about $50 more than this, likely with comparable or worse performance. IMO for $199 with a full clamshell and ARM Linux... this is the real deal if you want to learn to code on the cheap or just have an inexpensive laptop for dev tasks.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  That was the price I paid for an Asus 1215B with Linux pre-installed, nowadays still working maxed out to 8GB and having an SSD.
2Gkashmiri 6y ago
does anyone know if pine stuff is being sold in india by any local retailer? does the pine team has some third party seller or do i have to order from US and pay for shipping and exorbitant import fees?
- glax 6y ago
  Here https://www.fabtolab.com/boards/pine-64/pine64-pinephone https://www.fabtolab.com/boards/pine-64/pine64-pinephone If you buy from there, and they are not just drop shipping. Can you drop me message i would also like to buy one.
betwixthewires 6y ago
This I think is an excellent model and has worked for FOSS communities in the past. One example of a similar strategy is RHEL, where you pay for support rather than software. Of course with hardware it is different, you will pay for the hardware, but the price increase for consumer purchased hardware reflects additional cost of customer support. I think this is a viable and ethical business model. On another note, I hope to one day see projects like pine64 specifically using RISC V architecture.
- emosenkis 6y ago
  They just released their first product using Risc-V: the Pinecil soldering iron. Honestly, RISC-V or not, I'm just planning to use mine for soldering...
Shared404 6y ago
I noticed that the retail stores are supposed to ship within a few days of an order being placed. Despite the fact that I would prefer the community priced edition in every other way, the rapid shipping might actually make the consumer oriented store the way to go.
outsomnia 6y ago
"PINE 64 is not a business" is a bit of a red flag for me... it has a store, takes money and ships product, it's a business. It's on the hook for various things including 1yr mandatory warranty in the EU. This two price idea is a mess... just price the things how they have to be priced to be sustainable and allowing for some reseller percentage if that's the plan. The support thing can eventually be eased by picking the most evolved distro, supporting that and shipping the phones with it, and making it clear the others are unsupported. Pine model is certainly effective, but it's not the same results ecosystem-wise as Librem 5 premium cost paying for long term contribution to upstream projects and development (which Pine inherit). There should be room for both hopefully.
ncmncm 6y ago
Probably they should sell the community edition version disassembled. BTW I have Mobian on mine. Wonder why they never mention it.
- dannyw 6y ago
  I'd love to assemble myself (no tools needed other than screwdrivers etc) as a fun project!

81 points by rathboma 6y ago

That link was 404 for me. Maybe this will work better? https://www.pine64.org/2020/12/02/pine-store-community-pricing-online-retail-stores/ https://www.pine64.org/2020/12/02/pine-store-community-prici...

jsperson 6y ago

OT - due to a desktop failure I recently handed my MacBook over to my wife and took my PBP off the shelf. The default OS is now Manjaro. And it’s great! The original default (Debian) was pretty janky. If you’re like me and relegated yours to occasional toy duties, spend an hour and get it upgraded. It’s a whole new experience. Edit: on topic - the community support is generally quite good. I got great forum and Twitter response. I do think that the retail option will provide some incentive to polish up the product a bit. Can’t imagine giving one of these to my mom yet.

DenverCode 6y ago
Interested in how you feel about all the issues at Manjaro - specifically related to all the drama concerning Phil and funds. It is something you view as a non-issue or is it just not enough to make you look elsewhere? I'm genuinely curious. Best.
- jsperson 6y ago
  Honestly I hadn’t even heard of Manjaro until I saw that it was the new PBP default image. I’m not familiar with the drama. Sorry. It seems to be a smooth product so I do hope they work it out.
  - DenverCode 6y ago
    Phil Muller had been storing all funds in his personal bank account. The community desired more control over how the funds were used so OpenCollective and CommunityBridge were elected for fund collection - although Phil still holds more in his account then is stored in both CO and CB combined. Jonathon Fernyhough, a well known member of the Manjaro community, was placed in charge of managing the funds. Phil wanted to use $2k to purchase a laptop for one of the developers and wanted to bypass the process. This resulted in a debate between the two and ultimately Phil fired him and made himself treasurer. The community took to the forums to inquire into what Phil was doing, and he began locking/deleting threads and banning moderators. https://www.reddit.com/r/ManjaroLinux/comments/hwo33h/change_of_treasurer_for_manjaro_community_funds/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ManjaroLinux/comments/hwo33h/change... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23940824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23940824 https://linuxreviews.org/Manjaro_Linux_Lead_Developer_In_Hot_Waters_Over_Donation_Slush_Fund_For_Laptop_And_Personal_Items https://linuxreviews.org/Manjaro_Linux_Lead_Developer_In_Hot... That mixed with the deals he was cutting, proprietary software, as well as the SSL craziness (twice), really turned me off to them and I lost faith in the distro. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/31yayt/manjaro_forgot_to_upgrade_their_ssl_certificate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/31yayt/manjaro_forgo...
    - freedomben 6y ago
      Thanks for this. I had heard there was drama but didn't know much about it. Anyone able to represent the Phil side?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - DenverCode 6y ago
        While I can't find the press release he put out, here is the original discussion with Phil (@PhilM). He responds to a lot of the questions and makes statements regarding his actions in it. Hopefully this will help you see his side a little better. https://archived.forum.manjaro.org/t/change-of-treasurer-for-manjaro-community-funds/154888 https://archived.forum.manjaro.org/t/change-of-treasurer-for...
geokon 6y ago
There is also an Armbian beta (which supposedly is pretty good) and a stable release should be soon..ish.. maybe https://www.armbian.com/pinebook-pro/ https://www.armbian.com/pinebook-pro/ https://forum.armbian.com/topic/12332-pinebook-pro/page/3/ https://forum.armbian.com/topic/12332-pinebook-pro/page/3/

sneak 6y ago

I think this is probably a mistake, as I doubt people who don't know they're purchasing a hobbyist/selfsupported device will know or care about the difference between "community pricing" and "retail pricing". Hopefully it works out for them.

belval 6y ago
Yeah I get the same vibe from the whole thing. If someone can't read the obvious disclaimers on the store that the device is community driven and to expect some work to make it run, what hope is there that they will understand they HAVE to pay that 10$ increase?
- wmf 6y ago
  They need to hide the community store and do SEO on the consumer store so noobs won't even be able to find the wrong store.
- Nullabillity 6y ago
  Offer a $100 "retail edition upgrade" when they ask for support, pointing back to the disclaimer?
  - acomjean 6y ago
    Or bump the default price $100 dollars and offer a “unsupported developer edition” for 100 less.
  - belval 6y ago
    Sure, but do you remember the story ~3 years ago of the girl who didn't know what Ubuntu was but saw that it dropped the price of her Dell PC so she picked it? She then proceeded to raise a fuss and create a lot of negative press even though she was irrevocably the person to blame. TLDR: Try to design systems that are full proof, in this day and age people don't read and the truth doesn't mean anything. EDIT: That was 11 years ago what the hell happened to those years ?!
dghlsakjg 6y ago

ssivark 6y ago

I appreciate the challenge they face, and this attempt at a solution. If their retail arm does succeed better than anticipated, that would be a welcome bonus and richly deserved success that could augment the FOSS investment. In a sense this is a messaging problem leading to mismatched expectations, even when they have clear disclaimers on their product page. I wonder what alternative solutions might look like. Maybe advertise “community discount codes” prominently among Linux community forums and websites, so that only those who’re familiar with the online support community and asking for help will be likely to use those codes (rather than some naive consumer seeking to score a bargain). They could even mention on the product page that prominent Linux community forums should be a source for the relevant discount code (which might help introduce and “on board” newbies to Linux/FOSS communities).

0_gravitas 6y ago

Has anyone been able to get Arch to work on a PB? I know they have a version of Manjaro, so I'm curious about what the install/life is like for a typical Arch setup.

bArray 6y ago
Working with a similar device (PineTab) the experience is awesome. Once you get it installed you can just install any setup you like.
- 0_gravitas 6y ago
  Interesting! How much are you able to stick with the wiki for an install, are there any parts that require more specific, possibly a bit non-trivial to acquire, knowledge (as in, not available on the wiki)?
  - bArray 6y ago
    I literally just downloaded the SD card image, flashed it, then put it into the device and it booted. After that I knew where I was at after grabbing the default login details. Currently running a custom version of wm2 which built more for touch devices: https://github.com/danielbarry/oakwm/ https://github.com/danielbarry/oakwm/
avery42 6y ago
It's been a while, but a few months ago I used this image [0] and it worked great. [0]: https://github.com/nadiaholmquist/archiso-pbp/releases https://github.com/nadiaholmquist/archiso-pbp/releases

squarefoot 6y ago

From early in the article: "Let me start by making one thing clear – the current Pine Store isn’t going away and the pricing in the Pine Store will remain unchanged." Then near the end: "The Pine Store, in its current form, isn’t going anytime soon and the current community-oriented price point will not change." I don't want to nitpick, but I believe some further clarification would be needed; those "in its current form" and "anytime soon" can make a world of difference. Don't get me wrong, I totally support the move, although I'm not sure bumping the price to $299 for a device that isn't 100% ready yet would be a good move, especially considering that most customers in retail shops wouldn't be so sensitive about privacy, openness, etc. compared to online purchasers. If I may offer an idea to recover some costs, why not making a backplane board for the PinePhone mainboard, with screws, flat cables to the mainboard and connectors to the external world? It could become both a development platform for the phone, and be used as a SBC for tinkering. Also all people who upgraded their phone to the 3GB/32GB version could make some use of their old mainboard. It could become a normal procedure: phone is upgraded, old mainboard becomes useable again, everything is reused and nothing is thrown away. The message sent would be so different from other phone manufacturers and their planned obsolescence.

blihp 6y ago
My take was that they were primarily referring more to the costs associated with handling the overwhelming tech support requests from less/non-technical users rather than what sounds like occasionally selling specific items at a loss. It's the difference between user 'A' getting their device, having a problem and realizing that they need to do some searches/ask in the forums/get in a chat room to resolve it (i.e. self-support by the user... what many Linux users have been used to forever on the desktop/server side) and user 'B' having the same problem but deciding to contact Pine64 saying 'make this work!' (i.e. full support from the seller) It's one thing to contact Pine64 if you've done your due diligence and determined you have a faulty device (or worse: found a design flaw.) It's something else entirely, and the thing they aren't set up to handle, to expect it to be a consumer ready/friendly solution.

ogre_codes 6y ago

It's funny, there was a goofy toy computer called the "DevTerm" that popped up on the top of HN a couple times recently. It was more expensive than this, had a terrible non-hinged design, and was about $50 more than this, likely with comparable or worse performance. IMO for $199 with a full clamshell and ARM Linux... this is the real deal if you want to learn to code on the cheap or just have an inexpensive laptop for dev tasks.

pjmlp 6y ago
That was the price I paid for an Asus 1215B with Linux pre-installed, nowadays still working maxed out to 8GB and having an SSD.

2Gkashmiri 6y ago

does anyone know if pine stuff is being sold in india by any local retailer? does the pine team has some third party seller or do i have to order from US and pay for shipping and exorbitant import fees?

glax 6y ago
Here https://www.fabtolab.com/boards/pine-64/pine64-pinephone https://www.fabtolab.com/boards/pine-64/pine64-pinephone If you buy from there, and they are not just drop shipping. Can you drop me message i would also like to buy one.

betwixthewires 6y ago

This I think is an excellent model and has worked for FOSS communities in the past. One example of a similar strategy is RHEL, where you pay for support rather than software. Of course with hardware it is different, you will pay for the hardware, but the price increase for consumer purchased hardware reflects additional cost of customer support. I think this is a viable and ethical business model. On another note, I hope to one day see projects like pine64 specifically using RISC V architecture.

emosenkis 6y ago
They just released their first product using Risc-V: the Pinecil soldering iron. Honestly, RISC-V or not, I'm just planning to use mine for soldering...

Shared404 6y ago

I noticed that the retail stores are supposed to ship within a few days of an order being placed. Despite the fact that I would prefer the community priced edition in every other way, the rapid shipping might actually make the consumer oriented store the way to go.

outsomnia 6y ago

"PINE 64 is not a business" is a bit of a red flag for me... it has a store, takes money and ships product, it's a business. It's on the hook for various things including 1yr mandatory warranty in the EU. This two price idea is a mess... just price the things how they have to be priced to be sustainable and allowing for some reseller percentage if that's the plan. The support thing can eventually be eased by picking the most evolved distro, supporting that and shipping the phones with it, and making it clear the others are unsupported. Pine model is certainly effective, but it's not the same results ecosystem-wise as Librem 5 premium cost paying for long term contribution to upstream projects and development (which Pine inherit). There should be room for both hopefully.

ncmncm 6y ago

Probably they should sell the community edition version disassembled. BTW I have Mobian on mine. Wonder why they never mention it.

dannyw 6y ago
I'd love to assemble myself (no tools needed other than screwdrivers etc) as a fun project!